Why do phones still have bad sound quality?

[ceiling_fan]

Phones today can have cameras, video cameras, MP3 playback, hard drives, navigation tools, internet etc. What I would like more than any of those would be good sound quality. I'm somewhat uneducated when it comes to cell phones, so forgive me if this has an obvious answer. It just seems to me that phones could (and should) have clearer voices.

 

[Sage]

Even though they’re not exactly analogous, think of it like AM radio: it doesn’t matter if your speakers cost eleventy billion dollars, you’re still going to get crappy quality because of the inherent properties of the medium. If there’s a hugenormous mountain between you and the transmitter, no amount of technology on your phone can compensate for that. If anything, a better earpiece will probably just exaggerate the problem (just like if you compare a 32 kbps MP3 file to a lossless file on laptop speakers, you might not notice the difference, but if you compare them on an expensive sound system, you most likely will notice).

 

[Parnelli Bone]

Right. There's only so much technology you can pack into a system that is archaic in the first place. In America (for instance) we'll always have a slower internet than they do in Japan, because japan (and parts of Europe) have newer technology since they had to rebuild after World war II, wheras in America we can't massively redo our entire phone/internet/communication systems, which have been in place longer than in some other countries and are basically more on the obsolete side.

 

[Dave A]

Ding ding, Sage is the winner. The quality of the sound is more to do with the quality of the signal than the quality of the phones speakers. The could and should is all rather dependent on where you are and where the person your talking to is at the time of the call.

 

[ceiling_fan]

Thanks guys. 👍

 

[Moglet]

If you have an MP3 player on your phone you'll notice that they often use the same speaker to play music as they do for when you're taking calls and for speakerphone. But the music playback is much better than the sound from a call. 👍

 

[Danoff]

I don't understand the problem here. I thought cell phones these days used digital transmission - in which case the medium isn't an issue. As long as the digital bits all make it to their destination the sound on the other end is perfect.

I always thought it had more to do with the recording technology and the speakers themselves.

 

[G.T]

After using older mobile phones and our older home telephone, my new mobile phone is in a different league. The voices of people sound considerable more realistic and clear than what I was used to. I was fairly surprised.

Not sure why though. There must have been some progression with the signal conversion somehow.

 

[Dave A]

The speakers are fine, okay they're generally a bit tinny when palying MP3's but you can hear the lyrics in an MP3 clear enough. As you said, the hardware isn't the major issue, it's the signal. Ofcourse, the recording devices in mobile phones are pretty sensitive to things such as wind blowing into them which if your outdoors can cause poor quiality in sound. Also they blur certain noises together, so if someone is in a loud area it can become hard to seperate background noises from the guy talking.

However signal quality is still one of the key issues. Data rarely goes from 1 phone to another 100% as it is sent. Some people think that you get a clearer signal if your in a city, while that is true to a degre, thanks to the larger number of transmitters (and I'm speaking generally here) the actuall city environment is hell for a mobile signal. They don't pass through concrete as well as networks would like, and they can have a lot of concrete to pass through in a city. Then there's the signal bands, cetain bands are capable of passing through certain materials better than others, lower bands can pass through dense materials better than high bands, but a lower band degrades over distance more than a higher band, the catch is that your phone will not change bands during a call.

Then there's call volume, the more signals being carried by your providers network at the time of your call, the les space there is for your data.

Call quality is improving, and while your right, that if a signal get's from a to b in it's entirity it will be the same, that is largly the problem it'self. Moving the complete signal without losing any of it, without it picking up interferrence on the way from atmospheric pressure, loose data or whatever else.

EDIT: James, once the signal is in transmit, it's all down to the networks. The difference with your old phone and a newer one is likey to be the quality of the antenna and reciever.

 

[Danoff]

The advantage of digital is that it can be recreated perfectly even if partially garbled. If you're using an analog signal to represent a digital signal it can be subjected to a great deal of noise/multipath/etc. and still get to the phone on the other end and be recreated perfectly as long as the 1's and 0's aren't completely clobbered.

If it is clobbered then the sound is clipped, but it doesn't fundamentally change the tone characteristics of the sound on the other end. You can lose information and even introduce static, but you're not going to get a distorted signal.

Still not getting it.

The voices I hear from my phone when I talk to someone are about as good as the voices I hear when I play an mp3 via the phone speaker. I still think it's the speaker.

 

[Dave A]

If your getting good quality then your getting a good signal. Which is still the key, though technology has moved on in the last 14 months since I was worrking in mobile phones, there hasn't been that great an advancment the networking. If I'm calling somone else in Manchester, the quality should be good, if it's not then they're either in a noisy place, outdoors and the reciever is catching the wind, or they're in a basement or somewhere that doesn't pick up much of a signal.

A digital signal can degrade quite a bit before it messes up, I know that and I know where your coming from, but phone signals degrade a lot. It's like watching digital on your TV, you can watch it with a singal strenth of 70% usually with out any trouble at all. When it get's to 50% though, your going to see the screen flickering and the picture freezing on and off and other stability problems that will get worse the more the signal degrades.

It's the same with phone signals. For example, if I make a call in my house, the call quality is never as good as if I make he same call in my back yard, and noticably so. That's because my house has very good insulation and also the type of brick it is made from is very dense. This type of difference has nothing to do with my phones speakers, or the recorders, because they don't change between me making a call inside my house and then outside. Though I don't need to experiment like that to know what I know about phones.

I don't know if you live in a built up area or not, if you do and your getting a very clear signal all the time then your probably on a lower band. the signal degredation will still be there from passing through walls and such, but it won't be as severe, and as you said, within a certain extent, digital signals can rebuild themselves. A test conducted by UKFN who I worked for showed extreme examples of how the different bands were effected when passing through materials such as glass, metal and concrete which was published in the Talking Shop trade magazine written and published by one of the larger supplyers. The high bands didn't fare too well compared to the lower bands, they were controlled and they were extreme examples conducted in a small space area, but they still showed the difference and phones can't use a high and low band at the same time so it's potentially a no win situation in that area.

That was in 2002 mind you, so I know signal carrying and recieveing has improved a lot since then. But as of January 2006, what I'm saying here was upto date information. And I know it hasn't improved significantly since then. though admittedly my knowledge of 3G isn't where it would be if I hadn't shut up shop in 2006.

On the point of poor call quality, most problems with call quality are related to pieces of the call missing, for instance you might miss part of a word or similar. It's rare than the actual sound quality itself will change mid call (though it is possible), though that can be good on one call and bad on another, it has a lot of variables.

The reciever and speakers ofcourse make a difference to what your phone is capable of, but the largest issue with call quality at present is the network itself, the signal being carried from a to b. If your on a good network and run on a badn that suits your area then your not likely to have many problems. A network that doesn't provide good carier service on the other hand, will not be the same.

 

[niky]

I like the digital TV analogy. My cousin uses Satellite, we use cable. When the weather's good, his digital signal is pretty good... once it starts getting bad, it's like trying to watch an HD-DVD compressed to half the size of a YouTube video. Our cellphone signal (some ten miles outside the city) is almost as bad sometimes.

But Danoff's hit it square on the head... there's not much you can expect from itty-bitty microphones and speakers the size of pencil tips. We're used to listening to awesome sounds from really expensive new headphones, but no manufacturer is going to spend the money and time to ram one of those things into a cellphone that doesn't seal up to your ear perfectly anyway. Doesn't make sense, and it drives up the unit cost considerably (some of those good headphones are about 1/4th the cost of a good cellphone... now add that to the price).

Just buy an adapter and use good-quality earphones... much better than holding a cellphone up to your face.

 

[Turbo Lag]

I reckon its like the FM radio. I listen to Triple M everyday in bed so the reception is a BIG problem. If i put the reciever of the ear phones under 1 certain place there is excellent quality. But it depends on whether the station is playing a song or they're talking. The song is ALWAYS no good quality. But the talk back radio bit has perfect quality, even if the song quality was useless. Mind you i listen to this via mobile phone.